Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (2016), via LACMA

What makes an artwork truly original? What does intellectual property ownership look like? For over four decades, celebrated American multimedia artist Richard Prince has been investigating these questions through his unflinching conceptual works, most notably through collections of photography highlighting the myth of the cowboy and the American West through repurposed, rephotographed, and cropped Marlboro ads from the 1980’s and 1990’s. Currently, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is exhibiting Richard Prince: Untitled (Cowboy) featuring not one, but two previously unseen photography projects of this nature from the 2010s. (more…)

Agnes Martin, Falling Blue (1963), via Art Observed

Currently on view at LACMA, Agnes Martin’s ambitious and expansive retrospective has touched down on American soil, giving the late artist her first major museum exhibition in the U.S. since 1992.  Previously on view at the Tate Modern in London, the show studiously wends its way through Martin’s career, beginning with a series of New York School paintings from the late 1950’s that not only makes a strong case for her inclusion among the pantheon of the city’s great post-war painters, but equally hints at the artist’s later work.  Even as her early work traces similar interests in space and the expressive capacity of color and form, a distinct focus on line and space makes her pieces here particularly noteworthy, with delicate yet careful attention paid to the interactions between each mark, and the qualities of weight and gesture that her minimal selections imply.

Agnes Martin, With My Back to the World (1997), via Art Observed

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LACMA has received two major donations totaling $75 million to help fund its new, Peter Zumthor-designed permanent collection building.  The funds came from Wynn resort co-founder Elaine Wynn and A. Jerrold Perenchio, who also donated a selection of paintings valued at $75 million.  “There has been quite a bit of work to get the project to this point,” Director Michael Govan says. “These two gifts together are the largest single pledge to a cultural institution in L.A.” (more…)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been given ownership of architect John Lautner’s masterpiece home above Beverly Hills.  The home’s slanted angles and glass facade is most memorable for its appearance in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, and will be part of an expansion project including an installation by James Turrell.  “For me it ranks as one of the most important houses in all of L.A.,” LACMA head Michael Govan says. “And as one of the most L.A. houses, because of its connection to the view, that long view toward the ocean.” (more…)

Diana Thater, Knots and Surfaces (2001), via Art Observed

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has invited Diana Thater to open her first U.S. retrospective, currently on view in the museum campus’s Art of the Americas building, and pulling a focused, yet nuanced exploration of much of Thater’s early work, tracing the intersections of her various aesthetic and conceptual interests as they converge in her environmental installations here. (more…)

LACMA has a post on its Unframed blog this week, following the life Human the dog from Pierre Huyghe’s work recently installed in the museum, and her owner, artist Marlon Middeke, as he opens a show in Kassel.  “Marlon takes back mastery of himself after years of being, quite literally, just a piece of Huyghe’s art,” writes author Brian Sonia-Wallace. (more…)

Michael Govan has been awarded the Independent Curators International Leo Award for “extraordinary commitment to artists and pioneering contributions to the field of contemporary art.” “It’s an honor to be part of an ICI event,” Govan said.  “ICI’s exhibitions and support for independent curators have helped shape the field over many years. And ICI often gives art and artists exposure ahead of the curve.” (more…)

LACMA is currently showing the video collaboration between Steve McQueen and Kanye West, depicting the musician rapping and running through the Chatham Dockyards in London.  The video is currently running at the museum. (more…)

A Los Angeles Times article charts the success of LACMA curator Stephanie Barron, who has helped grow the museum and its collection into an international powerhouse of modern and contemporary art, as well as a growing Korean, Islamic and Latin American collections.  “I’ve had the amazing good fortune,” Barron says, “to work for an institution that has unconditionally supported the seriousness of the work that I want to do.” (more…)

The L.A. Times reports that LACMA will honor Barbara Kruger and Quentin Tarantino at its annual Art + Film gala in November. The article points out the similarities between Kruger and Tarantino’s work, highlighting their “artistic appetite for wordplay”. The two will follow in the footsteps of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick as well as visual artists such as John Baldessari and David Hockney.  (more…)

An article in the Wall Street Journal profiles Bettina Korek, the founder of For Your Art (FYA), an independent arts organization based in Los Angeles. With FYA, Korek stands at the intersection of the art world and the audience, planning and hosting events featuring artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Barbara Kruger, and John Baldessari that complement L.A.’s current exhibitions. The article reports that, with FYA’s public art events and contacts with institutions such as LACMA and the Hammer Museum, Korek hopes to bring “a new, more democratic patronage” to art. (more…)

Architect Peter Zumthor has altered his plans for the expansion of the LACMA campus, taking into account its close proximity to the La Brea Tar Pits, and instead has shifted the design to snake around the museum campus, avoiding the pits altogether.  “The original design would have severely impacted six of the nine active tar pits,” said Jane Pisano, director of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, which oversees the tar pits. “We are so pleased, I do believe this design direction preserves and protects the tar pits.” (more…)

James Turrell, Breathing Light, (2013) Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Copyright James Turrell. Photo copyright Florian Holzherr.

Part of his three-museum, nationwide retrospective, James Turell lights up LACMA with a retrospective that exhibits works from the artist’s nearly fifty-year career.  Extending across an entire wing of the Resnick Pavilion, and an entire floor in the Broad building, the exhibition is easily the heaviest concentration of works by Turrell in one place that one could hope to see in a lifetime.  Loosely chronological, the show begins with a projection work from the first years of Turrell’s light experiments, and ends with an immersive environment created this year.  These works, Afrum (White) (1966) and Breathing Light (2013), provoke pure wonderment, emphasizing the device central to Turrell’s artistic investigations: that the work itself doesn’t necessarily exist in the space, but within the viewer’s experience, moving through the work.

James Turrell, Afrum (White), (1966), Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Copyright James Turrell. Photo copyright Florian Holzherr. (more…)

A light installation by James Turrell has been uncovered in a Malibu Beach House, the Wall Street Journal reports.  The work had sat dormant in the guest house of late art collector Sydney Goldfarb’s Malibu home, and was uncovered when resident Tobey Cotsen visited Turrell’s current show at LACMA, where she realized that she had a Turrell of her own.  The work has since been confirmed by the artist’s studio.  “Where have I seen that before?” She said to herself during the exhibition. “I’ve seen it in my house.” (more…)

A number of U.S. Museums are exploring new approaches to exhibiting works while in storage, the LA Times reports.  Museums like LACMA and the Broad Museum have attempted to place larger portions of their collections in “visible storage,” where interested visitors can view them.  “There is this public assumption that museums are hoarding objects in dark rooms, and by the way that isn’t totally wrong,” says LACMA Director Michael Govan. “What we’re saying is that those objects are worthy for viewing and studying if not always for exhibitions. So you’re not contemplating a masterpiece, but maybe you’ll find value in comparing and contrasting different examples of vases.”

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Artist James Turrell recently spoke with the Financial Times as he prepares for his three museum retrospective at LACMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as a solo show at LA’s Kayne Griffin Corcoran space. The artist is still vigorously involved in his Roden Crater Project, as well as his early career in Los Angeles. “I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York there’s taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It’s a form of restriction.” In Los Angeles, he said, “there wasn’t any party line so you could do what you wanted.”

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Next month, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will announce an ambitious, $650 Million plan for a new museum space.  As the plans stand, the new construction would call for the destruction of core parts of LACMA’s campus, including the original 1956 building by William Pereira.  The proposal is the latest in a series of proposed major construction on the museum over the years, but the first under director Michael Govan, who has already led the museum through a number of smaller expansion projects. (more…)

Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art has appointed three new members to its board of trustees: former KB Homes CEO Bruce Karatz, investor Stanley Gold and collector Orna Amir Wolens.  The announcement comes after MOCA made the decision to remain an independent institution and forego a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  “MOCA is a dynamic part of the cultural identity of Los Angeles,” Said Bruce Karatz. “I am delighted to be part of the board that will help ensure MOCA continues its tradition of impressive, groundbreaking exhibitions.” (more…)

In a new twist to the Museum of Contemporary Art’s current fiscal problems, MOCA is reportedly in talks for a partnership with the National Gallery, a development that casts doubts on that museum’s possible acquisition by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  The discussed plan between MOCA and the National Gallery would open the door to collaborations on exhibition and research, but would do little to alleviate MOCA’s financial woes.  “The goal at this point is stabilizing them and get them standing as an independent institution,” says National Gallery chair John Wilmerding. “We’d like to see them survive and thrive, and if we can help them, that’s all we’re doing.” (more…)

Artist Catherine Opie recently spoke with ArtInfo about the potential merger of LACMA and MOCA, and her views on the institutions’ futures. Opie left MOCA’s board of directors last year amid criticism of the museum’s administrative direction.  “I know there’s a LACMA offer on the table and personally I think that would amazing,” Opie said. “LACMA has an amazing ability to raise money, Michael Govan has done an incredible job with that campus.  If he feels like he can take that on and turn things around it would be incredible.”  (more…)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Via the Los Angeles Times

In a letter dated February 24th, Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and his co-chairs have made a formal offer to acquire the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in downtown Los Angeles.  The proposal outlines a plan for the transition of ownership of MOCA’s two museum properties to LACMA, which would maintain their operation under the MOCA banner. (more…)

Financier and art collector Richard Hollander has donated a large block of photographs by the prominent photographer Edward Steichen to a trio of U.S. museums, ensuring that the artist’s work will be available to the public across the United States.  The photographs were purchased at directly from Steichen’s estate, and will be given to the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Block Museum in Chicago.  “I’ve gotten the bug,” Hollander said. “Now I want to share my vision.” (more…)

Kehinde Wiley, The Three Graces, all images courtesy Galerie Daniel Templon

Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris is presenting Kehinde Wiley’s first solo show in France, entitled The World Stage: France, 1880-1960. Wiley’s portraits feature mostly black and brown men on elaborate, baroque backgrounds, their natural stances modified by Wiley to echo the Napoleonic, kingly gestures of traditional portraits like those of Anthony van Dyck.

Kehinde Wiley, Bonaparte in the Great Mosque of Cairo

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L.A. Times’ Christopher Knight reflects on the market as 2012 draws to an end, with a certain inconsistency in the art market as a whole: demand for high-quality modern and contemporary work, with soaring prices for young artists is coupled with the failing economic health of many nonprofits, (LACMA certainly among the most well-known examples). “Obscene private wealth and gross income inequality are global phenomena; the economic system is rigged and surplus cash must go somewhere”.  (more…)